iPhone HD

Middle of the week again, so we've got enough news to get you through the rest of your night, before you rest your eyes and hit the tail-end of the work week. We're happy to have you here with us for another edition of the Daily Slash, and we hope we can keep you awake long enough to reach the end. First up, in the Best of R3, the HTC Desire's been rooted, looks like a certain online publication is going on the offensive, and does Windows Phone 8 already exist? In the Dredge 'Net, we've got a temperature-sensitive coffee cup, the BlackBerry Partners need Super Apps, and a touch-sensitive faucet that needs to be seen to be believed.

So WWDC 2010 is fast approaching - June 7th we now know - and while developers may be concentrating on getting their apps up to speed with iPhone OS 4.0, the rest of us will be anticipating the debut of the iPhone HD. The fourth-generation iPhone may have been unofficially previewed over the past few weeks, but we're confident that Steve Jobs & Co. will still have a few surprises in store. While we'd love to stuff you all in our bags and take you in with us, we'll have to do the next best thing and run the traditional SlashGear liveblog at http://live.slashgear.com/.

The stolen/lost/misplaced iPhone HD saga continues, with news that - in the aftermath of Gizmodo editor Jason Chen coming home and discovering police had raided his house in the hunt for incriminating evidence of the $5k deal - Chen has hired a criminal lawyer to represent him while Gawker retained a First Amendment specialist to advise them on their case. The company maintains that Chen - and the other staff involved - are protected by California's journalism shield laws; however at least one legal expert has suggested that such a defence has been incompletely tested by the courts.

Apple have announced the dates for their Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC 2010), which will kick off on June 7th 2010 and offer coders the first ever iPad development sessions together with working labs for iPhone OS 4. Registration for the five day event is now open, with sessions including "Using HTML5 Local Data Storage" and "Integrating Ads with iAd".

It's been covered since the beginning: iPhone HD/4G images get leaked, and then sure enough there's a full-blown tear down of the device by another blog. And then it got a bit more interesting. Well, sure enough, it's starting to reach that ultimate conclusion that pretty much everyone saw coming. According to documents that Gizmodo has posted on their site, California's R.E.A.C.T computer crimes task force has raided an editor's home, seizing several pieces of property.

Last week's expansive leaks (and no shortage of rumor) gave us the opportunity to pick through the hard changes involved in the Apple iPhone HD; a display estimated at 960 x 640, a front-facing camera, talk even of the 1GHz Apple A4 CPU from the iPad. The question remains, though, will the iPhone HD be another game-changer or more of an incremental evolution? Right now, extra pixels and faster CPU aside, it looks more of the latter; the cynic might compare the iPhone HD with OS 4.0 to an ageing athlete, requiring the services of a bolted-on exoskeleton in order to keep up. The new software platform (which has likely saved a few surprises for the official fourth-gen hardware reveal later in the year) brings some much-anticipated features, but they feel a little clunky in their implementation. As I said in my recent iPad review, background notifications and multitasking will work, but they lack the purity found in earlier iterations of the platform.

Looks like you can't stop the avalanche. Just when we would have imagined the lock-down on Apple pre-released products would have gone in overdrive, a pair of iPod Touches with cameras appeared on eBay this morning, but then were quickly yanked from prying eyes. So many questions, and yet no answers to go along with them, except from what we can take away from the pictures.

Welcome to Friday! You made it! Don't you feel proud of yourself? We're proud of you for making it through your long, arduous, and probably ridiculously busy work week, and landing squarely right here, with us, for this edition of the Daily Slash. Tonight, in the Best of R3, we've got a pre-order option for an Android-based tablet, the life expectancy of the iPad Camera Kit accessory, and another kind of Samsung Galaxy S. In the Dredge 'Net, the police are looking into the iPhone HD/4G debacle, there's a kitchen out there that might destroy you, and even more bad news for Palm.

It's only Tuesday, and this week already feels like a rollercoaster. And it's probably not going to slow down any time soon. Either way, it gives us enough juice to get through the day, and we can't ask for anything more than that, now can we? In tonight's edition of the Daily Slash, we've got Seesmic adding some goodies to their Android app, a man's pinky getting stolen, and an expensive phone. And then in the dredge 'net, there's a camera that takes one for the team, the iPhone HD won't have a removable battery, either, and the App Store sees the cartoon light.

All that was needed to bring the iPhone HD escape to a close was an attempt by Apple to bring the beast back into their cage; with the arrival of a formal request from the Cupertino company's general counsel, that's finally happened. Gizmodo have received a letter from Bruce Sewell, a senior vice president at Apple, saying "It has come to our attention that Gizmodo is currently in possession of a device that belongs to Apple. This letter constitutes a formal request that you return the device to Apple."